Stories of true grit and patriotism are a reflection of what’s truly happening in the USA today
Another day, another attack on country music, patriotism and Donald Trump.
Singer-songwriter and country music star Maren Morris announced recently that she’s leaving country music and blasted everyone on the way out. The millennial star claims that country music is having an “existential crisis” by tying itself so closely to patriotism, America and freedom.
However, that’s precisely what country music is all about!
To suggest that country music is “too patriotic” is to not understand country music at all. It’s in our very name: country music. Our music is written for love of our country, our heart for America.
Because country music is so closely tied to the heartbeat of America, it also happens to reflect what’s happening across the country at the very moment. As a result, it’s not that politics has infiltrated country music, it’s quite the opposite – music ends up reflecting the very conversations happening across the country today.
For example, Jason Aldean’s song “Try That In A Small Town” wasn’t a racist tome. It was an outcropping of a three-year conversation, since the summer of 2020, about the change in the American landscape, law enforcement, the defunding of police, and the mass looting that soon followed and has become commonplace in towns across America today.
It’s part of the conversation that’s been happening around the country and like so many other pop culture issues, it found its way into song.
In fact, country music is deeper than Morris may even know.
Long before Morris was born, I wrote “God Bless the USA” 40 years ago this very year. In the song, I wrote about what I saw with my own eyes: my grandparents, their farm in Northern California, and their experience struggling to survive in the early 1980s against a grain embargo caused by geopolitical crises around the globe.